Normally, I'm embarrassed for being "caught" looking at them, so I quickly look away. My face is in the perpetual driving scowl, which is so common on the roads.
No one ever smiles. Likewise, I never smile. This is going to change starting today! I'm going to document one full week of trying to smile at people who I see. Also, I'm going to give them a quick nod of my head, a quick "hello".
Here are the results:
Day 1: Tried catching the eyes of 3 people on the way to work. Not one of them looked back at me. One guy tail gated me, however, and I could see him motioning with his hand saying "cmon, move forward". That was silly because there was nowhere to go. I got angry and kept flashing my brakes at him. Bastard!
Day 2: Still no success. I looked over at one dude and he seemed to be staring over my head. Beady eyes, huge pick up truck, unshaven. I was immediately scared so I looked away.
Day 3: Noticed a lot of people listening to ipods in their cars. One guy passenger was listening to an ipod while his wife drove and had no ipod. A lot of fun in that household. Tried the smile at a gas station to someone who pulled up behind me, but I looked away before they could smile or frown back so I don't know the result. Maybe they didn't even see me.
Day 4: Hmmm, too tired today to make a strong effort. This is actually quite hard. Hard to remember to look at people and when I do, hard to remember to smile. I pulled up to one woman and kept staring over at her, hoping to catch her eye - as we were in a jam for awhile. I must have looked super freaky. The weird guy staring at her from the car in the next lane. She never even glanced in my direction.
Day 5: I looked over at some dude and couldn't tell if he was looking at me or not. He had huge sun glasses on. So I didn't smile. Didn't want to look like an idiot, smiling at nobody. That's it for the week. Overall, the experiment was a huge fail.
No comments:
Post a Comment